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Ask HN: What is your favorite method of sending large files?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite method of sending large files?

#101

Post by [deleted] »

mderazon wrote: post #92
livueta wrote: post #86

Bittorrent. No, really. Lots of nice behaviors when transferring large amounts of data between arbitrary endpoints. Transferring the torrent metadata is pretty trivial and can be done via a wide range of methods, and having that flexibility can be nice. Unlike HTTP, you get reasonable retry behavior on network hiccups. Also, more robust data integrity guarantees, though a manual hash test is probably a good idea eith…

Can you recommend easy software to do the creation? Don't you need a tracker as well?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite method of sending large files?

#102

Post by jedimastert »

mderazon wrote: post #92
livueta wrote: post #86

Bittorrent. No, really. Lots of nice behaviors when transferring large amounts of data between arbitrary endpoints. Transferring the torrent metadata is pretty trivial and can be done via a wide range of methods, and having that flexibility can be nice. Unlike HTTP, you get reasonable retry behavior on network hiccups. Also, more robust data integrity guarantees, though a manual hash test is probably a good idea eith…

Can you recommend easy software to do the creation? Don't you need a tracker as well?

+1

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite method of sending large files?

#104

Post by parliament32 »

bscphil wrote: post #80
parliament32 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to comment on that article you keep referring to, but I don't want to clutter up the top of the thread so I'll do it here. The author really wants to dislike PGP, but the reason everyone trusts PGP is because it's been around forever. Yeah there've been deficiencies, just like there've been deficiencies in OpenSSL, but that doesn't make it a bad tool. I could go on but this xkcd sums it up: https://xkcd.com/23…

> By default, GPG keys expire in a year. This speaks to the article's complaint that GPG is usually the wrong tool for the job. For example if you just need to transfer a file securely (and have a fast, reliable internet connection on both ends and don't need to worry about active tracking of metadata), you can use Magic Wormhole (or a similar PAKE system) to do it. Imagine two scenarios: one with GPG and one with PA…

>With PAKE the keys used to exchange the data are ephemeral, and so this isn't even a possibility.

AFAIK this isn't really true. If the adversary captures the initial key exchange plus all the data (ie the full transaction), then later discovers your PSK, they'll be able to decrypt. The only case where this helps you is if they capture some packets out of the middle without the initial handshake.

>authenticated encryption

It doesn't matter if your ciphertext is authenticated if it's both signed and encrypted, which is what I was getting at. In a normal TLS-like encrypted conversation, yes AEAD is very useful. But it's not applicable here.

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite method of sending large files?

#105

Post by kilroy123 »

kvn_95 wrote: post #2

Magic Wormhole ( https://magic-wormhole.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ ) if it's between OSes. Between OSX, AirDrop works very well. I have sent >10GB files between Macs, quite quick as well. I have never send a 10TB file so I wouldn't know. None of my drives are that large yet :)

I once sent a huge file over airdrop and was shocked how much faster it was then sending through the local LAN.

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite method of sending large files?

#108

Post by enriquto »

unilynx wrote: post #70
ashton314 wrote: post #55

Netcat: $ nc -l 4242 > dest And then on the sending end: $ nc hostname 4242 This works great when you just need to get a file of any size from one machine to another and you’re both on the same network. Are used this a lot at one of my offices to schlep the files around between a few of the machines we had.

This is especially fun when combined with piping through tar, and adding pv in the mix for a transfer speed "progress" bar. Fastest way to transfer a collection of files on a local network and doesn't require temporary storage for the archive

piping through tar is my "power move" when I want to steer a new recruit. I just do it casually in front of them... depending on whether they are awed or horrified by that, they'll get more hacky or more formal work.

Re: Ask HN: What is your favorite method of sending large files?

#109

Post by parliament32 »

dane-pgp wrote: post #61
parliament32 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to comment on that article you keep referring to, but I don't want to clutter up the top of the thread so I'll do it here. The author really wants to dislike PGP, but the reason everyone trusts PGP is because it's been around forever. Yeah there've been deficiencies, just like there've been deficiencies in OpenSSL, but that doesn't make it a bad tool. I could go on but this xkcd sums it up: https://xkcd.com/23…

I wish the downvoters would explain what's wrong with the parent comment, as the counter-arguments raised by parliament32 seem completely reasonable to me. Perhaps it's just the length of the comment, and they would prefer it written up as a blog post somewhere.

Don't worry, this is normal for HN. As a commenter higher up said, "People without experience come around and think they can replace an old tool with a better one". People tend to like thinking along the lines of "surely old things must be bad" and you'll get met with disagree-downvotes anytime you try to explain why you want old software in fields like crypto or internet routing. Try defending BGP in any of the DDOS or hijack threads and you'll be met with the same fate.
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